You are love
Love is as innate and natural as breathing. I can share with you breathing techniques to help balance your nervous system and emotional body, techniques to relax you and techniques to assist in releasing stuck emotions.
But I cannot teach you how to breathe. Like breathing, love is an essential process done automatically by your body. But I cannot teach you how to love yourself.
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
Rumi
What I can offer is help in reflecting on why you feel that you don’t know how to love yourself. Together we can dive into the habits you’ve accumulated and begin to identify the barriers that, as Rumi says, you have built against embracing this simple truth: You are love.
Where in your life do you feel unloved or unloveable?
Love is our true nature and therefore cannot be arrived at, nor can love be gained or earned. We are children of the One Source, the Divine, God. By not loving ourselves aren’t we disrespecting that energy?
This is truth. We are love. Sages and saints throughout the ages have repeatedly spoken to the power of loving yourself and others as God loves you.
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
Marianne Williamson
And to that I add, nor does it serve the Divine.
What keeps you from embracing the truth that you are love? Why don’t you love yourself?
Everyone was born with the ability to reprogram themselves and uncover the love that has always been here. How? By first becoming aware of and making peace with your current inner dialogue. This will allow you to begin to dismantle the lies and embrace this truth: You are love.
Awareness: Identifying the Why
For many years I was self conscious about my eyes. I was born with a lazy eye and as a child, was teased mercilessly. This, of course, left me feeling ugly, unwanted and unloveable. I was convinced that God herself rejected me.
I’ve done a lot of emotional work over the years, work that took me to the truth: I do love myself, lazy eye and all. My appearance is not an issue. How I look has nothing to do with love.
What is your lazy eye? When you look at yourself in the mirror, do you like what you see? What does your inner dialogue say? Is it something like, “I’m too short, too fat, my hair is the wrong color, my skin is blotchy?”
Or is it more like, “Look how beautiful I am!”
Identifying what you dislike and judge about yourself is a starting point. I’m not suggesting that you must like all your physical features or personal habits. Your inner peace lies within your acceptance of your physicality and in the recognition that they have nothing to do with love.
How do you make peace? Through acceptance.
Acceptance: Surrender
As a child I hated my lazy eye. When I finally surrendered to the fact that I had a lazy eye, I let go of my judgment that it was bad or ugly. That is when the door swung wide open to recognizing that my lazy eye had nothing to do with my self-worth or loving myself.
I don’t love myself despite my eye nor do I love myself because of my eye. I love. Period. And that love is all encompassing and nonjudgmental. Surrender doesn’t mean we have to like something to accept it. It simply means finding okayness, being at peace with it.
What part of yourself do you dislike? Did you know you can have a physical characteristic you don’t like but accept it and love who you are?
Action: Embracing Self-Love
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Lao Tzu
Now let’s create an action plan that can further support your journey to truly loving yourself.
Try the following journaling exercise to help you see what is really going on. And when practiced over time, journaling helps to identify patterns. Recognizing the patterns will allow you to question them and get to the root of the issues the patterns bring.
The Practice
Start by placing yourself in a safe environment with little or no distractions. Consider lighting a candle and diffusing your favorite essential oil. Get comfortable. Have your journal and some water (or tea if you prefer) nearby.
Breath-work: Intentional breathing helps relax and balance the nervous system. Here are two of my favorite techniques. I suggest doing three rounds.
- Inhale to the count of four, hold for one count and exhale to the count of eight
- Inhale deeply and slowly from the bottom of your spine, imagine the breath moving up to the top of your head, hold (notice the tension) and when you exhale, blow it out hard.
Body awareness meditation: Being aware of our body and the physical sensations within strengthens our ability to be in Presence.
- Start either at the top of your head or with your feet.
- Become the observer and slowly scan your body.
- Just notice any feelings and sensations that are present.
- Nothing to do, this is simply a way to allow you to come fully present in this moment within your physical body.
I’ve included an audio of my body awareness meditation: https://www.leebyrdmystic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Body-Awareness-20221216.mp3.
Journaling: Now take out your journal and answer the following questions. As you write, keep your awareness on your physical body. It is important not to overthink this part. I suggest that you let it flow, don’t edit or try for the right answer. Write down what comes to mind immediately.
- Name one part of your body that you dislike or would rather change.
- Why?
- Locate in your body where you feel this sensation of rejection.
- Describe in detail what the physical sensation is.
- Now ask yourself, is this physical sensation okay, can I simply allow it to be here?
- Allowing the sensation as it is allows us to come to rest. Notice that.
- Keeping in mind that what we may dislike about our physical body has nothing to do with loving ourselves. Can you allow yourself to simply accept that you dislike this part of your body?
- Write about that.
- Remember that you are a child of God and as such, you are perfect. Can you allow that?
- The last question: What would happen if you loved yourself just the way you are?
Once you feel like you’re finished with writing, close your journal, drink some water or tea and let it go for now. Consider doing some movement, maybe put on some music and dance or do a few yoga sun salutations or go for a slow walk in nature.
And when you are ready, read what you wrote and reflect on that. Maybe write a bit more.
I suggest you do this exercise often, maybe weekly. This practice of writing down ways you’re finding acceptance and self love will give you a record of your journey.
Consider that practicing this journaling exercise is actually practicing loving yourself. By taking these small, simple steps to uncover ways to find self-acceptance, the barriers melt away and your innate love within has a chance to thrive and grow.
Life is a journey, not a destination.
Ralph Waldo Emerson